NFTs, Non-Fungible Token, rose up during the COVID pandemic. Already in existence but not well-known, in times of closed art galleries and online exhibitions, they seemed to offer new opportunities for artists to sell and circulate their work while many other streams of income were lost. Although some maintain that NFTs democratize the art market, others see them as yet another way in which finance capitalism is corrupting the arts. Additionally, they promise valuation for every entity: the possible digital steps that every object could be imprinted on the blockchain. NFTs are therefore not only smart contracts for artworks, but politically charged ways of fundraising, campaigning, or creating hybrid installations.
In 2022 researchers, artist and activists from three time zones – Germany, New York, and Ukraine – came together in a digital space to show and discuss their works about and with NFTs. The exchange was accompanied by the Ukraine artist Tina Tikhonenko, who joined from war-torned Odessa. The result was a graphic recording as a live-action piece that illustrated not only the event, but also the interrelational and multimodal journey between real life, digital behavior, the history and future of NFT, and its relevance in wartime.
